When you set up your own restaurant, you must start preparing the strategy, well-organized management, and an adequate inventory so that your restaurant can meet all the targeted goals. The obvious way is probably to serve appetizing dishes at a reasonable price to attract customers.
However, imagine if your restaurant is facing a financial problem. This situation requires you to carefully find a clever scheme to maintain the price without degrading the quality of your dishes. Let’s say this problem is the price of the ingredients starts to rocket. The best approach to tackle this issue is to monitor the supply chain management and regulate it well. It will depend on how you run the inventory management.
Generally, restaurant inventory management includes several activities. It covers the process of analyzing the inventory supply, utilizing it, and recording the inventory supply that comes in and comes out. Effective and routine inventory management is an essential element that ensures your restaurant’s supply chain health. It eventually will influence the well-being of your financial condition.
This article will give you an insight into 3 vital processes that you should not miss in restaurant inventory management.
Table of Content
1. Planning
Planning is a process that forecasts demand and the number of orders. This forecast is the estimated amount of the required inventory. This estimated inventory should be in accordance with the restaurant’s standard recipe.
This process is substantial to predict how long the existing inventory will last and determine when to acquire fresh inventory. With planning, restaurants can reduce waste and avoid over or lacking inventory.
Other than that, planning for inventory management should consider other types of predictions such as economic forecasts to anticipate inflation, money supply, and other business cycle indicator. You might need to consider technological forecasts to update the financial plan if the restaurant applies a new technology relating to inventory management.
2. Execution
Execution is a process that covers several activities of come in and comes out inventory calculation. The process itself encompasses five main activities.
The first is an order request. It is a process where inventory staff informs the order and waits until the supplier confirms it. Then the purchasing system is processed. It needs coordination with the financial department. When it arrives, it goes to the storing process depending on the inventory types. As the order from the customer is out, the inventory gets into the preparation process.
There are three types of inventory. Each type requires a complex execution process and different treatment. The fresh inventory procurement requires every single day update because the perishable risk is pretty high. This kind of inventory will get into the preparation process multiple times in a day and it needs to be recorded in detail.
Meanwhile, inventory staff needs to update the frozen inventory procurement once a week because this type of inventory will last longer. However, if the storage does not get enough attention, this type of inventory will be on the verge of being wasted. The same treatment applies to the dry inventory.
Therefore, every inventory that comes in and out in a month will be in abundant quantity. It requires an accurate data recording from inventory staff. The execution process will depend heavily on thorough data input and screening. Otherwise, over or lacking inventory will happen instead.
3. Control
This process is where you need to make sure that all inventory comes in and comes out according to the plan. So technical mistakes such as reckless inventory staff that order or release the inventory without awareness or data input would be huge trouble.
To avoid those risks, two controlling processes must perform simultaneously with the other executing processes. The first is verifying delivering activity during receiving the delivery. This process is to control the stock from the supplier and check the quantity and the condition of the ordered inventory.
It will minimize the error such as delivering the wrong order from the supplier. If there is any, the manager must communicate with the inventory staff quickly to clear the problem.
The second is the inventory checking process which aims to control the inventory that comes out from the storage. This process should synchronize with the inventory that goes into the preparatory process. Inventory staff records and matches the remaining inventory in the storage. It ensures that no inventory is out without purpose.
Conclusion
These three inventory processes are critical to the restaurant’s financial stability. Everything you do must be done with the utmost precision. Restaurant managers should use software that can calculate inventory data and integrate it with other functions, such as Inventory Management Software, to ensure accurate data. You will also benefit from ERP software in inventory management, which will become more efficient because the inputted data will be saved and analyzed for restaurant inventory management purposes.
Monitor the entire inventory management process, from planning to execution and control, to secure restaurant finances without jeopardizing the quality and price of the dishes your restaurant serves.
